In case you’re in Hong Kong, for ARTHK or otherwise, please stop by the Tulou Open House preview event on May 14 – this project has been in the works for quite a while, and we’re very excited to finally share it. Official press release to follow.

Tulou Open House: Project Preview in Hong Kong
Monday, May 14, 3 – 5pm
Afterschool Cafe
2/F, 17 Yun Ping Road, Causeway Bay
銅鑼灣恩平 道17號2樓
RSVP to Samantha Culp, samantha@newterritories.org

This Monday, please swing by Afterschool Cafe for a preview of the Tulou Open House project 2012 – a temporary, site-specific creative experiment and mini-conference taking place this June at a traditional Tulou (round earthen house) in Fujian Province. During this open-ended “expedition”, a diverse group of artists and scholars from greater China will explore the structure, symbolism, and everyday life of the Tulou as a laboratory for new projects and collaborations, a fresh lens for the concept of creative community, and a potential site for expansive future projects at the Tulou and beyond. The event will culminate in a public “Open House” event on the weekend of June 8-10, which is open to visitors and the local community alike, and will stage a program of talks, screenings, workshops, performances, guided tours, and artistic interventions.

On Monday, organizers Dana Wu (Friends of the Tulou) and Samantha Culp (New Territories Studio) will present an overview of the project, discuss its background and goals, and lead a conversation with HK-based Tulou participants and others who might like to join or learn more.

>>> QUESTIONS/CONTACT/MEDIA — 问题/联系/媒体 <<<
EMAIL: tulouopenhouse2012@gmail.com
TUMBLR: tulouopenhouse.tumblr.com

(a film by Samantha Culp and Nicolas Sauret, 2010)

A blend of documentary and fiction, “Many Mansions” explores the mythical structures of Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions.

(supported by a Fonds des Artists grant, Alliance Française, HK)

Wandered around ART HK 09 (lamely attempting to play paparazzi for Scene & Herd), saw friends, drank on rooftops, went to the track… the usual.

Full set here.

Title: “Flu Season / Scene & Herd Column”
Publication: Artforum Online
Date: May 2009
Article Link
Full Text Below

JUST A WEEK BEFORE THE OPENING of ART HK 09, hundreds of international travelers were quarantined at the Wanchai Metropark Hotel—a stone’s throw from the Convention Center hosting the fair—and most passengers landing at HKG were having their temperatures screened by hazmat-suited officials. Luckily, the specter of swine flu didn’t faze most players in an Asian art market stricken with its own ailments. The hordes descended on the city as planned, perhaps reassured by a statement from ART HK promising “hand sanitizers at the entrance and at strategic points within the fair.” Or maybe, as one Beijing artist joked, people were just hoping to get quarantined at the five-star Grand Hyatt.

At the vernissage, the mood was cautiously buoyant; the fair’s unofficial motto of “better than last year” seemed to hold up at first glance. Near the entrance, new additions Gagosian, Lisson, and White Cube were working big and splashy looks (with Lisson showing wall-to-wall Julian Opie), while farther back, usual Beijing suspects such as Boers-Li, Galleria Continua, Urs Meile, Red Gate, and ShanghART mixed with a host of pan-Asian galleries like Kukje, Tomio Koyama, and Eslite, each of which showed consistently polished work. Prominent collectors and local visitors all nodded their heads approvingly and tossed about buzzwords like quality, professional, and potential. The only complaints were about the white walls (plastic instead of wood) and the white wine (undrinkable).

Better alcohol was on offer at Gagosian’s opening-night afterparty at the Pawn, which sadly seemed a victim of its own exclusivity. The historic Wanchai pawnshop-turned-lounge actually had elbow room at midnight—all the better, perhaps, for the dedicated few dancing to the’80s playlist put together by the gallery’s Nadia Chan. (Though Gagosian opened a local office last year, there’s still no word on when they’ll launch an actual gallery.) At a slightly livelier Pawn party hosted by Schuebbe Projects the following night, a few attendees offered their early assessments of the fair. Beijing/Lucerne dealer Urs Meile remarked that ART HK’s ambition to become the Art Basel of the East is not out of reach. He compared Hong Kong to Switzerland (“Same population, very practical people, forced to become very international because they are so small”) and also explained why it’s a good contrast to Beijing: “Beijing is hell––interesting hell, but hell.” Of course, art sold in China is also burdened with a 34 percent luxury tax––one advantage that tax-free Hong Kong holds.

A highlight of the fair’s programs was the Asia Art Archive’s “Backroom Conversations,” a series of screenings and panels that aimed to give an intellectual counterweight to the market madness. The afternoon premiere of the AAA’s new documentary, From Jean-Paul Sartre to Teresa Teng: Contemporary Cantonese Art in the 1980s, was standing-room-only, and even Sir David Tang (founder of Shanghai Tang and the China Club, art collector, and general cultural pundit) was in attendance. In her introduction, AAA chair and art historian Jane Debevoise discussed the “complex and important reasons” that Guangdong is overlooked in art-history books. It’s a topic close to the hearts of the Hong Kong artists, curators, writers, and dealers who have also felt left out of the narrative (and/or bubble) of Chinese contemporary art. When Sir David in effect called Hong Kong artists lazy for relying on the government to support an arts scene while the ’80s Guangdong artists created their own, an irate woman shouted him down, telling him he didn’t know anything about Hong Kong art.

The state of Chinese contemporary art was clearly on everyone’s minds, and it was specifically explored in another panel, “China Focus: Reinvesting in Contemporary Chinese Art.” Moderated by dealer Johnson Chang, critic Hu Fang, artist Qiu Anxiong, collector Uli Sigg, curator Pauline J. Yao, and Artforum’s own Phil Tinari, the group weighed in, agreeing on certain points: Everything is in flux, artists will be tested, and Mainland criticality has to step it up. In a more combative panel later that evening, the London debate forum Intelligence Squared made its Asian debut with the polemical topic “Finders, Not Keepers! Cultural Treasures Belong in Their Country of Origin.” Inspired by the recent YSL auction debacles regarding the Old Summer Palace bronze animal heads, several distinguished men with British accents (including Sir David, again) spoke for and against the motion, which was moderated by CNN anchor and Twitter enthusiast Kristie Lu Stout. In the end, the audience voted 110 for, 247 against; apparently, people like the Elgin Marbles just where they are.

As the fair plunged into the weekend, visitors were lured farther afield by various openings: Li Qing at Hanart TZ, Yan Lei and MC Yan at Tang Contemporary, and two interrelated shows at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery: photographs by Dinh Q. Lê at the Soho space, and, at the gallery’s annex in the Chai Wan Industrial district, a group show of young Vietnamese artists curated by Lê and Zoe Butt. The latter’s warehouse after party stretched late into Saturday night, mixing young Hong Kong artists like Lee Kit, Chow Chun Fai, and Warren Leung Chi Wo and his wife, Sara Wong Chi Hang, who compared the annex space with the sizes of their own studios with artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Michael Lin.

By Sunday evening, the fair was all but over––except for those who were staying for the opening of the Louis Vuitton exhibition, “A Passion for Creation,” opening at the Hong Kong Museum of Art several days later. News circulated about big purchases of works by Damien Hirst, Opie, and Gilbert & George, but most galleries went home with few sales. Robin Peckham of Boers-Li Gallery twittered a glum summary of the scene: “Art HK winners: major Western galleries, local Hong Kong galleries. Big losers: major mainland galleries.”

Just in case you weren’t aware, it is not possible to enter Chaoyang Park at West Gate 1 and walk north to West Gate 3 within the park. Well, it is possible, but only if you are willing to scale chain-link fences and sneak through restricted horse stables and climb over the padlocked metal gates at either end of a decommissioned bridge…

Title: “Hong Kong Art Wave”
Publication: Planet Magazine
Date: Winter 2008/2009
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Hong Kong has always been a mercantile town, built by pirates, British opium-traders, and successive waves of mainland immigrants whose inclinations were more capitalist than communist, and by no means artistic. In recent years, though, the “Special Administrative Region,” as Hong Kong became termed after the handover to China, has become a significant platform for the explosion of Mainland Chinese visual art, hosting one record-breaking auction after another. But even beyond the auction block, some exciting new developments indicate that Hong Kong’s local art scene may finally be coming into its own.

The most intriguing venues are truly alternative spaces where indie creativity thrives. A growing synergy with fashion and design has produced ventures like the Diesel Brave Gallery, the Agnes B. Librairie Gallerie, and the independent boutique Kapok, each showcasing video, photo, and installation alongside clothing racks and hipster toys. On the even more DIY side, Para/site Art Space in the historic Sheung Wan district has supported local artists ranging from photographer Warren Leung Chi Wo to up-and-coming conceptualist Lee Kit for over a decade, and has recently brought big international names like Paul Chan, Cao Fei and Lawrence Weiner into the mix. Across the harbor in Kowloon, the Cattle Depot Artist Village is a former abattoir now housing a small theatre, studios, and independent spaces like Artist Commune, 1a Space and Videotage in its original red brick courtyard.

On more establishment levels, this past spring saw the first official Hong Kong Art Fair (Art HK 08), featuring more than 100 galleries from around the world, just a few weeks after the latest round of sky-high Sotheby’s sales. Collectors in town for the fair could also trek up to the veteran commercial galleries around Hollywood Road, such as Schoeni Gallery (launching pad for many of the big-name mainland oil painters) and 10 Chancery Lane, as well as the new branch of Bangkok/Beijing-based Tang Contemporary. New openings also include Atting House, an auction space and website devoted to Hong Kong artists (the brainchild of the venerable Johnson Chang, curator and founder of Hanart TZ Gallery); Ooi Botos, a space dedicated to edgy contemporary photography; and if the hype is to be believed, Gagosian Gallery, will bring their blue-chip art-stars to the Fragrant Harbor sometime this year.

Still, many artists lament Hong Kong’s lack of a world-class contemporary art museum (the existing one focuses on modern and Chinese ink works), or a Biennale to call its own. But if the dynamic combination of glitzy mainland capital and DIY local spirit continues, it may only be a matter of time.

(editor, video by artist Leung Chi Wo, 2008)

Title: “Sign”
Type: Video by artist Leung Chi Wo (Hong Kong)
Editor and Music Supervisor: Samantha Culp
Music: Lullatone
Details: HDV, PAL, 13 min., English subtitle, 2008

Description:
Sign is a 2-part video work by Leung Chi Wo exploring the idea of non-mainstream communication and the meaning of human reality overloaded by mass media.

Part I is an educational video featuring deaf teacher Laisarn (Laisarn Leong) and her shadow (Belle Reily) about the idea of baby signs in Auslan(Australian Sign Language) and the demonstration of basic signs with which parents can actually learn to communicate with their children whoever deaf or hearing. Whereas Laisarn communicates with the audience in Auslan, her shadow does it with her eyes and mind.

Part II is a fictional video showing a young mother in communication with her baby in Auslan. Though taking place in a peaceful and pleasant atmosphere, the mother tries to convey the words that she comes across every day, which can be harsh or discomforting. The juxtaposition of loving expression and hostile meaning depicts a surrealistic scene of our schizophrenic world. The vocabulary here is chosen from The Canberra Times.

Video editing by Samantha Culp; music by Lullatone.

More information

Title: “Reel Life: From Gotham to Graham Street”
Type: Biweekly Column on Hong Kong Film Scene (Columnist April-August 2008)
Publication: TimeOut Hong Kong
Date: Jul 2008
Article Link

Unless you’ve been living in a cave (not a Batcave), you probably know that one of the most anticipated films of the summer is The Dark Knight, and Hongkongers have a special reason to brave the queues on opening weekend. For a few surreal weeks last autumn, the production set up shop on our fair isle to shoot a few scenes – and I was lucky enough to help out as a lowly assistant and watch some of the action. The film was shrouded in more secrecy than some military operations, but I can at last share a few inside tidbits from behind the scenes.

First off, wasn’t Batman supposed to jump from a plane into Victoria Harbour, a stunt that was cancelled due to water pollution? Well, no. The official word was that the scene was cut because of script reasons, but perhaps it was because the Hong Kong government was too rigid on flight altitudes and safety regulations (which do you think is the most diplomatic answer?).

Batman does, however, stand on the top ledge of IFC looking down over Hong Kong – a feat accomplished by some expert safety-rigging and a very trusting Christian Bale clad in rubber mask and Batsuit (which, incidentally, travels in its own sleek black box the size of a small elevator.) As a clearly relieved Bale stepped back onto the main deck after a take, one cameraman chuckled: “Everyone is going to think it’s CGI anyway!”

One shot that is unmistakably verité was filmed on the Mid-Levels Escalator – and if you were anywhere in the neighborhood that day, it was hard to miss. What seemed like thousands of people were magnetically pulled to stand beneath the escalator, lean off of bamboo scaffolding, snap pictures on their mobiles, try to sneak past the security lines in Batman costumes… all for a glimpse of Bale (in Bruce Wayne daywear) and Morgan Freeman chatting innocuously on the rampway.

The Center and the Peninsula Hotel helipad also make appearances, as does that more questionable piece of the Hong Kong landscape we used to take for granted – Edison Chen. All I can say is that he seemed a bit pouty and that most of the Hollywood imports weren’t fawning over him.

Finally, Hong Kong is shot as Hong Kong, not some strange substitute for Gotham. Director Christopher Nolan seems to have quite a fondness for the city, and he supposedly wrote some of this script while shut up in the Hong Kong Four Seasons during a typhoon. Which is why everyone spent days at the West Kowloon Helicopter Pad, preparing aerial shot after aerial shot of the island and harbour (using special camera-equipped helicopters brought from the US – it’s nice to be a big-budget production).

Of course, it’s not like you need another reason to see The Dark Knight. But getting to watch a superhero roaming the streets where we run errands is pretty hard to beat.

Hong Kong has its fair share of iconic actors and actresses, but the biggest screen star of all is right under our feet. In the most memorable Hong Kong films, it’s the city itself that deserves top billing, and Hong Kong filmmakers are wise to capitalise on our greatest asset.

The result is a place where the urban and cinematic fabrics are so interwoven, it’s sometimes hard to tell where one stops and the other begins. We’ve all had a few life-imitates-film moments (try walking out of One Night in Mong Kok into actual Mong Kok and you’ll see what I mean), and certain neighbourhoods and landmarks are so frequently used that they risk becoming visual clichés. Others are so completely defined by one work that they become invisible (at least on the big screen) for some time.

One of these places is Tsim Sha Tsui’s Chungking Mansions, which has been surprisingly under-utilised since Wong Kar-wai made it an icon in the mid-90s. In Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, Wong looped his narrative strands through the labyrinthine hallways and cramped guesthouses of 36-44 Nathan Road, forever imprinting it upon the brains of international cinephiles. I was one of them, and my experience seeing Chungking Express in high school kick-started a passion for Hong Kong movies, and later Hong Kong itself.

When I moved here, a decade after the release of Express, I was curious to see how the real-life Mansions compared to the one glimpsed through Christopher Doyle’s hazy wide-angle lens. In short: quite different. Chungking now attracts a racially diverse mix of people, including a healthy contingent from Africa, and is considerably safer thanks to increased CCTV coverage. After exploring a changed Chungking, I began to think the location was due for a second look through the view-finder. At least a quick and dirty one.

Which is how, in recent weeks, I ended up haunting the hallways and guesthouses of Chungking with a boom mic and an eye out for the security guard. My partner and I plunged into this project, an experimental short documentary (to call it “indie” would be glamorising it), with both feet, and it’s unclear as of press time if we will emerge in one piece. Not because of any real danger (although there were a few moments where it seemed an unnamed government’s consulate wished to steal our camera and/or tapes). We made it through this, and the heat, and the rain, and the difficulty of trying to do pedestrian-control in a place that’s constantly like MTR at rush hour. But we have found, to our frustration (and, in our more zen moments, delight), that truth is always stranger than fiction, and the end of the story is still writing itself.

The nice news is that Chungking Mansions was always ready for a close-up. In some ways, Hong Kong’s iconic locations are the most reliable actors around.

In case you’d like to revisit a classic in a new form, the Criterion Collection recently announced they’ll be releasing Chungking Express on Blu-Ray sometime in October of this year. Go ahead, you deserve another (ahem, legal) copy.

“DA da DA da da DA da DA…” intones the familiar muzak, accompanied by the synthesized sounds of cymbals crashing. Over the loudspeakers in my neighborhood grocery store, the elevator music equivalent of Cantonese Opera is blaring out to prepare shoppers for the coming New Year. As if they could ignore it.

In early January, shops traded in their Christmas carols and grinning snowmen for cardboard fire-crackers, gold plastic lanterns, and posters of chubby-cheeked babies. The green pines of Xmas have been replaced with miniature kumquat trees (as they need to be produced so rapidly and in such great numbers for the season, the tiny orange fruits are mostly tied onto the branches, further enhancing the Christmas-ornament effect). Local advertising has been taken over by the animal zodiac symbol of the coming year—as 2008 is the Year of the Rat, the promotional tie-ins are a little bit more difficult than usual (1).

And then, just as the hyper-commercialism reaches a crescendo, everything goes quiet. The roaring city fades to a hush as shops close their shutters, postal service suspends, and traffic thins to a barely-perceptible trickle. Hong Kong families sequester themselves into their flats for several days, to cook, eat, make baai nihn(2) visits to relatives’ and friends’ homes, give and receive lai see (3), watch cheesy television, gamble on cards or mah jong, and just sort of relax in a bubble of domesticity.

The American New Year, by contrast, is relentlessly public, and must be commemorated with friends, loud parties, intoxication, and sexual tension (the New Year’s kiss when the “ball drops”). Followed only by a hangover, and the eventual breaking of New Year’s resolutions.
When I first moved here, I found the Lunar New Year a bit anticlimactic, compared to the Western model. But almost four years later (Monkey to Rooster to Dog to Pig, and now onto Rat), I’ve grown to love the hypnotic lull of the holiday. I’ve even come to see the consumer frenzy that precedes it as a necessary prelude, to give a contrast to the stillness that follows.

This year on Lunar New Year’s Eve, my boyfriend A. and I retreated to our flat like all Hong Kongers. We may have forgotten to open the window exactly at the stroke of midnight to let the old year out and the new one in, but we did avoid showering, sweeping, using knives or throwing away trash (symbolic of destroying good luck for the coming year). Last year, A. decided to break all of these superstitions for an art video, and had a run of very bad luck over the coming months. Better not to risk it, now that we’re older and wiser.

We bundled up in blankets and scarves (Hong Kong apartment buildings have no heat) and watched downloaded TV shows until we fell asleep, then woke up late the next morning to do the exact same thing. Later on New Year’s day (Choh-yat), A. went out to buy an elaborately-wrapped box of chocolates, a gift to bring to his great-uncle’s home in the Prince Edward district of Kowloon. With barely any cars on the roads, we got through the cross-harbor tunnel in record time.

At A.’s uncle’s flat, the TV flickered in the background as we helped make dumplings from a bowl of sticky pink raw pork mixture, and little rounds of dough, helpfully rolled flat by an aunt. Still, I was unable to make mine stick together with the elegant pinching motion that most Chinese learn as children. Trays of dumplings were taken away to be fried, and empty ones brought back to be filled. Family gossip looped around the small table in Cantonese and Mandarin, as a little shih-tzu dog aptly named Fluffy celebrated by showing his affections for my leg.

Finally the trays came back with cooked dumplings, and we sat down on small stools to properly eat the fruits of our labor. A.’s great-uncle cranked the TV volume, which was broadcasting the annual New Year’s parade starting at the Tsim Sha Tsui Cultural Centre. Pop stars shivered in parkas and chirped through their microphones, introducing various performing troupes from around the world (including, for some reason, my hometown’s UCLA cheerleaders) who sashayed in bright spandex through their routines, then moved on down Nathan Road. Several groups featured small children dressed as mice or rats, invariably fleeing from sexy “cats” while in pursuit of enormous foam cheese wedges. A.’s family mocked the program in a good-natured way, but we were all rapt as we ate copious dumplings. Every once in a while one of us would discover a dumpling that tasted particularly sweet—due to A.’s uncle mischievously putting lotus seeds (4) in some of the dumplings he filled.

At some point A. was called away by his great-uncle and uncle to go into the other room. I continued to watch TV with the non-blood relatives and domestic helpers, just as a troupe of fantastic Thai ladyboys took to the screen to vamp it up on a Thai Airways-sponsored float. When A. returned, I asked him what he was doing. “Just paying respect to our ancestors,” he replied. I was charmed that A., whose parents are from Hong Kong but who was born and raised a real American boy, was thrilling his great-uncle by joining this traditional New Year’s custom. And it made me remember that the New Year celebration isn’t only for the people in the room, but also for those who peer down from strategically placed black-and-white photos on the walls.

The past pops up in unexpected ways in Hong Kong, a city dedicated to its continued eradication. Though Disneyland commercials on TV that night shrieked about the “Year of the Mouse” (Mickey seizing a perfect advertising opportunity for their failing HK theme-park), the Lunar New Year is still one of the most traditional things in this city. At its core, it’s a celebration of the hope for prosperity, shaped over centuries by a shared cultural memory of endemic poverty. But like all New Year’s, it’s also about the symbolic rebirth of time.

The Rat is the first animal of the zodiac, and with him begins a new 12-year cycle. In some ways, 2008 is the New Year’s New Year. Unfortunately Hong Kong astrologers say that the Rat ushers in a period of more chaos, more change, more danger than any other year. So all we can do is wait to wash our hair for one more day. Give and receive red lai see filled with crisp new bills and small coins, to show that there is always something left over. Hibernate with family and friends; eat our own weight in dumplings. A.’s great-uncle’s flat was a bit chilly that night, but it was worth it. Leave a window open, to let the past float out as the future floats in. Just like breathing.

Footnotes:
(1) Luckily this year McDonald’s has designed a French-fry box that looks like a rat, instead of trying to sell rat-themed burgers. Their 2007 Year of the Pig pork sandwich was just sort of depressing.
(2) Baai nihn is the practice of visiting relatives and friends in the days following New Year to celebrate together.
(3) Lai see or hung bao are the red pockets of cash traditionally given to children, young people and service workers during the Lunar New Year.
(4) Lotus seeds are traditionally eaten during the New Year as a symbol of virility and long life.